CHAPTER IX.
THE WAY TO BE HAPPY It was not until the week before Christmas that Doris saw Hugh again.
They met in the hunting-field.

It was the first hunt she had attended since her marriage, and she went to it alone.
The meet was some distance away, and she arrived after the start, joining the ranks of the riders as they waited outside a copse which the hounds were drawing.
The day was chill and grey.

She did not altogether know why she went, save that the loneliness at the Mill House seemed to become daily harder to bear, and the longing to escape it, if only for a few hours, was not to be denied.
She was scarcely in a sporting mood, and the sight of old acquaintances, though they greeted her kindly enough, did not tend to raise her spirits.
The terrible conviction had begun to grow upon her of late that she had committed a great mistake that no effort of hers could ever remedy, and the thought of it weighed her down perpetually night and day.
But the sight of Hugh as he came to her along the edge of the wood was a welcome one.

She greeted him almost with eagerness, and the friendly grasp of his hand sent warmth to her lonely young heart.
"I am very glad to see you following the hounds," Hugh said.

"Are you alone ?" "Quite alone," she said, feeling a lump rise in her throat.
"Then you'll let me take care of you," he said, with a friendly smile.
And she could but smile and thank him.
It was not a particularly satisfactory day from a fox-hunting point of view.